I stumbled over an auction on Ebay, and after asking the seller about who has printed it, the headband and dyed edge, he has posted some pictures which are quite strange for me.It appears to be a 1977 George Allen & Unwin, printed by Clowes & Sons with a unpriced dustjacket and bind in cloth,therefor it should be a Export Edition Variant 1 as listed on Deagols site (Kudos to your work! It was and is really a great help for me).But there shouldn´t be any edition which has a blue and white striped headband and no blue dyed top edge.

In the pictures you can see, that the top edges from the cloth are faded nearly to grey.Is it possible that the blue dye on the edge of the paper faded away too or someone sandpapered it for whatever reason?

Looking at the picture up close, I'd say there are signs of blue, and (taking into account the general condition of the top of the boards) that it is, as you suggest, very badly faded. I have a BoLTs I copy which is quite badly faded but otherwise is in great condition --similar thing going on.

That aside, as Deagol would no doubt concede, the combinations of variant points is not as definite as it would seem from booksellers listings. In Deagol & Wayne Hammond's online and published bibliographies respectively, contraction (of information presented) is inevitable.

Bare in mind that aside from the sheets themselves (with the two errors --& the assertion that these are the first state of the printed sheets) there is no proven priority of binding (cloth & paper boards; headbands; top pages dyed blue etc) for the Clowes first impressions. Forgetting the presence of a price, or not.

It can be interpreted (but it is not stated) that Wayne linked the cloth binding with the dyed pages + headbands (the latter two features he does imply are linked), as this is what is commonly observed. But Bibliography does not state this. Ditto, the paper boards with no top dye + no headbands (again the latter two features [or lack of] are stated as linked). Again, this link is not stated. Thus (assumed):-

CLOTH boards, Headbands + dyePAPER boards, no Headbands + unstained

Again, since it is commonly observed, although Wayne states no priority is observed here, most paper board copies have one of the errors corrected & are therefore regarded as intermediate Clowes copies --sitting between the Clowes first (proper) and the Clowes-BCA variant. Thus most people regard the cloth copy as the actual Clowes "export" ("true" if you like) variant.

However, unless you can be certain that all cloth copies (regardless of other features) have both errors present, and that all paper copies have one error corrected --one cannot judge the state of the printed sheets themselves solely using these features. And, other combinations do exist. (Which is why one would be incorrect to assume anything regarding the sheets from other features present, or lacking.)

BH

Posted on: 2011/5/25 14:09

_________________You drive a hard bargain – you can have it for £10 all-in – one consolation (for you) is that you do not have to hear the cries of my children, for bread...